DashCon 2014 Part Deux
This is a followup to my previous post.
Though kinder more forgiving souls are willing to give the DashCon heads the benefit of the doubt and label the mess "growing pains", the more I read of their series of misinformation and outright lies the more I'm inclined to believe otherwise.
To those who had a "good time", that's great, but it does not discount the negative experiences of the Night Vale fans, guests who were locked out of their rooms and given the run around, and vendors, artist and exhibitors who suffered bad sales due to grossly overinflated attendance numbers. To make matters worse, a committee head spread rumors and created a series of false stories documented here. Eventually she was debunked by the con itself, but the campaign she held against a guests who expected to be paid according to contracts is horrid. Though she was also possibly an admin at one time, there was no mention of her being let go by the con. Basically, if the convention likes you, there's no consequences for spreading libel.
"When people start telling malicious lies to cover up their own mistakes, that is when they go from innocent incompetents to just bad people." ~ Joseph Fink
But even if those unhappy people are a minority, and most managed to make lemonade from lemons, I'd rather not give my trust and money to organizers who, as far as I can tell, are unethical, manipulative and disingenuous. What kind of "professional" organizer takes large sums of money from a room containing of crying, upset minors afraid to be kicked out? Unless DashCon dumps their current leaders and gets a whole new group of competent people, I have no faith in 2015. At the moment, it looks like it's business as usual, and their plans remain quite ambitious. For example, they're tossing around the idea of meal plans, another expense they'll have to properly plan, budget for and manage.
There's a lot of rumors going around, but here's a few first hand experiences. Most attendees -- with perhaps the exception of Night Vale fans -- had a good time, making the best of the panels and enjoying the company of like minded fans, but exhibitors and artists seemed to have experienced more troubles. While attendees were generally well behaved, the staff were the ones to whip them up into a frenzy over the hotel issues.
Additional articles can be found on io9, Escapist, Reddit, Fandom Fail on Dreamwidth, and Fandom Wank on JournalFen.
Though kinder more forgiving souls are willing to give the DashCon heads the benefit of the doubt and label the mess "growing pains", the more I read of their series of misinformation and outright lies the more I'm inclined to believe otherwise.
To those who had a "good time", that's great, but it does not discount the negative experiences of the Night Vale fans, guests who were locked out of their rooms and given the run around, and vendors, artist and exhibitors who suffered bad sales due to grossly overinflated attendance numbers. To make matters worse, a committee head spread rumors and created a series of false stories documented here. Eventually she was debunked by the con itself, but the campaign she held against a guests who expected to be paid according to contracts is horrid. Though she was also possibly an admin at one time, there was no mention of her being let go by the con. Basically, if the convention likes you, there's no consequences for spreading libel.
"When people start telling malicious lies to cover up their own mistakes, that is when they go from innocent incompetents to just bad people." ~ Joseph Fink
But even if those unhappy people are a minority, and most managed to make lemonade from lemons, I'd rather not give my trust and money to organizers who, as far as I can tell, are unethical, manipulative and disingenuous. What kind of "professional" organizer takes large sums of money from a room containing of crying, upset minors afraid to be kicked out? Unless DashCon dumps their current leaders and gets a whole new group of competent people, I have no faith in 2015. At the moment, it looks like it's business as usual, and their plans remain quite ambitious. For example, they're tossing around the idea of meal plans, another expense they'll have to properly plan, budget for and manage.
There's a lot of rumors going around, but here's a few first hand experiences. Most attendees -- with perhaps the exception of Night Vale fans -- had a good time, making the best of the panels and enjoying the company of like minded fans, but exhibitors and artists seemed to have experienced more troubles. While attendees were generally well behaved, the staff were the ones to whip them up into a frenzy over the hotel issues.
- Emma Grant's Account of DashCon
There had been a dance party and panels going on, but con staff had closed it all down and herded everyone into one room to tell them that they had an hour to raise $17,000 or the hotel was canceling the event. [...] The thing that bothers me the most is that the concom made enough money in the year leading up to the con to pay at least one person a salary for her work planning. - More DashCon Sadness
...the people and artists are awesome, but there are some half assed events. I went to the Myazaki (studio Ghibli) panel and the woman who was leading it started off saying "the person who was supposed to help me with this bailed and I will just let you pick my brain and lead the conversation". [...] A friend of mine said the same thing about the Fandom Karaoke: no equipment, just making up songs on the spot and singing in an conference room full of people. We entertained ourselves, but there was no structure. - I was at DashCon AMA
Many of the hallways and lobbies were barely populated at all; as a person who prefers going to larger conventions, I was disappointed. The Dealer’s Room/Artist’s Alley left much to be desired. There were practically no dealers selling official merchandise of any kind. [...] I did sit in one panel [...] for a cool three minutes or so before walking out the door. It started 15 minutes late and was so poorly improvised on the spot it was terrible [...] The worst part, though, had to be the so-called “video game room.” [...] there was only ONE TV in the entire room, along with a bunch of tables. - This isn’t a secret but I was at dashcon this weekend
...when we attended the welcoming ceremony I was not impressed with these people in charge, they were 20+ and acted like children.[...] I don’t think the blond guy at the podium was any help at all, I feel like he made everyone in the room feel desperate... - AMA Request Dashcon Attendee
The venue was FAR too large for a first-year con. [...] The vendor area was embarrassing. [...] The showing of Pacific Rim almost certainly violated copyright for a public performance - I'm at the con now and the panels just all got cancelled and were beimg herded to one room.
- This is a very long post and This is the last post I will make about the events of Dashcon
As we approached the room our panel was being held in at 10pm, we were stopped by a member of Dashcon security, who told us to congregate in one of the large rooms, because an emergency meeting was taking place.[...] So, after the celebratory, “Woo the con is back on everybody go to your panels!” announcement was over around midnight, I found the nearest staff member and talked them into taking me back to the “Admin War Room” as Riot and I have dubbed it, where I grilled one of the staff members about rescheduling the Hannibal Panel. They told me to send them an email, which I did, which included all my contact information and a request to call me at any time. [...] And then there was the mess about getting our panel back. I’m not going to go into the exhaustive details of the whole he-said-she-said-ze-said event, but essentially, we were told three separate times by staff that our panel had been canceled, only to be texted by a con-goer whom we knew that we were back on the schedule! Had no one attending the convention alerted us, we never would have shown up! - Yes I was media for the convention
no I was not given what I was promised. I only care about the people that attended the convention now. I don’t know what the future holds for Dashcon but I will do what I can for the people that attended. I lost a lot of money with this convention and not from donating but from just expenses incurred and not getting what was promised. - Yes I was at DashCon
The artist’s alley opens at 8 only to artists, so I figured I would just go wait.[...] It’s 7:20am. No one is watching the artists alley entrance and I try the door fully expecting it to be locked. It wasn’t. Many artists left their wears in the artist alley because we were told that it would be locked and/or guarded until artists were allowed in at 8am. This is a breach of contract, and therefore dashcon owes EVERY ARTIST AND DEALER full refunds for the tables the paid for($150 per table). Trying to confront the convention organizers about this proved frustrating. When Roxanne finally did meet with a group of artists, including myself, she refused to believe me when I explained the doors were unlocked and unguarded. As a group, we asked that we each be refunded fully for our tables since dashcon did not uphold their end of the contract. She asked for 30 minutes to make a decision. She did not ever actually meet with any of us again. Most of us were forced to leave before anyone would talk to us about the issue at hand due to things like travel arrangements, work the next day, etc etc. - Dashcon masterpost by a vendor
Not sure of full numbers yet but it doesn’t feel like there were that many people there, not really. I’ve seen a ton of numbers tossed out and none of them really seem to match. So I had to send home a fair bit of stuff, which sucks. [...]
A girl comes around and introduces herself as the head…something? I’m not sure if it’s the dealer room head person or what but she’s basically the vendor’s POC. Very nice girl, I give her one of the extra pastries I have. The other girl who I met on day 1 ended up resigning, I guess. Fantastic. I don’t think anyone who signed up for this knew what they were signing up for. - What the heck happened at DashCon, an artist's perspective
Those of us in the AA were starting to freak out about not being able to make back what we put in to going to this con. This is a risk of every convention, but DashCon exploded so fantastically around us that the majority of the artists there did not break even. I was one of the lucky few that was able to pay for my hotel and table, but taking in the time I took off work to be there, it was by a slim margin. This was supposed to be a con to end my summer con season on a good note. Instead I this hot mess of complete financial irresponsibility surrounded by lies and mystery. [...]
Sunday: At 7:20AM a fellow artist checked out the AA doors to find them unlocked and no security present. We had hotel security confirm that they had been unlocked since 5AM. [...] Myself and a group of other artists went to speak with the head of the con around 9:30AM. We were told we would have to wait for Roxanne, probably for a half hour. We were there for at least an hour before she showed up and spoke with us for maybe five minutes. We weren’t getting anywhere in the conversation, so we just asked for our money back and for us to be released from our contracts as we did not want to be associated with DashCon as vendors any longer. She told us she would have to talk about it with her fellow admins and disappeared again. [...] Things didn’t get cleared up. Elle was refunded a paltry fraction of the table cost, and there was no legal clarity achieved whatsoever. - DashCon Official Statement
the icing on the cake for me we were informed that the doors to the hall had been open since 5 AM. This was completely unacceptable. Our entire stock was left in the hall. We were told explicitly in our contract that the doors would be locked after we had left and that they would not be open till 7AM. So we, us including other artists and vendors, decided to go to the con admins and ask for our money back. If things went as we hoped we would have taken our refund and kindly left the convention with no ill will. But instead we were ignored for and hour and a half. When we were finally able to speak with the head admin she tried to say that another artist was blatantly lying about the time they came in and the fact that the hall was completely unguarded. And I don’t mean in a firm way I mean she was practically stomping her foot about it. - My Dashcon experience as an Artist (TINY FONT WARNING)
9:30 AM Along with 2 staff witnesses, a volunteer security personnel for DC, we (Myself and 5 others) confront Roxanne about our concerns. After asking for a refund, she quotes us 30 minutes to talk about it with other admins. We agree.
Noon: We (myself and booth-mate) finish packing up and wait to hear back from Roxanne. (Nearly 3 hours by this point)
1:00PM Roxanne and others leave the room next to the registration office to go to the final farewell without saying anything to us.
Approximately 2:30PM: We talk to Roxanne again. We demand our money back. She leaves to discuss this again with other Admins while saying again that badge sales are non-refundable. I persist.
My table mate and I wait for news. A woman (staff, likely) hands me 20$ saying “This is for you.” I ask her what it’s for. She says she “doesn’t know, they just told [her] to give it to [me]”. I say “Is this for the tables? I had two.” And she goes back to ask for more information. She comes back minutes later with 40$ saying that this is the difference between 4 badges (for the 2 tables) and the actual table cost.
Roxanne still has not come back to talk to me. I leave without seeing her or any more admins. This “half hour” process takes 5 hours from start to finish. - Interview with a DashCon Artist
Artists paid $150 for their tables; vendors paid $300.
Admins assured artists and vendors that they were expecting 3,000-7,000 attendees, which as we know did not happen, but the artists anticipated those numbers.
Some artists did very well, others were just barely able to break even.
On Saturday morning, Amber, the admin who was in charge of the artist alley/vendors’ hall resigned. The replacement staff member was seen once and then never again.
Set-up and opening times were unclear and not communicated properly to artists and vendors. - Interview with a DashCon Volunteer
- Anime Secrets DashCon 2014
Although it was already 2pm, some of the dealers hadn’t arrived or finished setting up yet [ED: according to a friend, vendors only had four hours to set up before the hall opened, which is ridiculously rushed] [...]
We had barely gotten underway on our first episode-the panelist was a no-show, so a few of the DashCon staff went out of their way to procure speakers and an mp3 device containing the podcast-when the door opened at the back of the room. Three staffers appeared and announced that, due to a financial issue, they’d have to move us into the ballroom. [...] In the hallway, however, my friend and I realized that all the panels were being herded into the ballroom...
Additional articles can be found on io9, Escapist, Reddit, Fandom Fail on Dreamwidth, and Fandom Wank on JournalFen.